We Can Do (Only) What We Can Do

We cannot control people—anyone. Even those we’re ‘in charge of’ have their own minds; their own wills.

Some people, in some circumstances, confound our expectations and we cannot help being tempted to scream at times—certainly from within ourselves, no matter how we restrain our external behaviour.

We know the theory. We have to somehow ‘just accept’ others responses, at least at the level of our own emotions. Of course, this is true.

When Practice Meets Theory

It’s a wonderfully freeing thing to not hold a single fig against another person, no matter our various bi-polar positions in life. Likewise, what a boon it can be to be free of tenuous arrangements of pomp and circumstance because of the gaping divides that exist forever between us.

This is at once, mutual acceptance, borne of mutually viable maturity—social maturity. It’s a marvellous thing when it happens.

Practice meets theory when we know we’re opposed and yet we can still happily co-exist, knowing beyond knowledge that somehow our individual reason isn’t all there is.

But the hard question still hasn’t been answered—just how are we to accept ‘everything’ that comes from another person, especially the person seemingly opposed to all of what we’re doing?

An Attempt at Answering a Hard Question

Often change happens over a longer timeframe than we’d like. The less we resist people in our trying to force the pace and ‘colour’ of change the more receptive they’ll be in seeing the reason for it. We cannot convince the slightest gnat; they’ll only convince themselves.

Other people have their own reasonability to contend with—as we do too. It’s a condition we forever should bear in mind. They see what we cannot see. We see what we alone can see and we can’t make them see from our viewpoints, unless they actually want to step into our shoes.

It begs a question: would they want to?

This is an important issue central to influence; creating the tension within people to want to see others’ viewpoints, including our own. Covert tactics, however—if we’re given to them—are prone to abject failure as the other person’s antennae-of-manipulation is piqued to this. We can only influence from a perceived morally-equal ground.

The fundamental premise that gets us over the line is one that works in all circumstances; it’s simply about acceptance. There is no easy or hard way to this outcome as far as we’re personally concerned. How we get there (easily or with difficulty) is simply our path. It just is.

So, we can see that I haven’t really answered the ‘hard question’ at all, other than to point out what is obvious to me upon reflection and application of the subject matter.

We come back to the source, then. We cannot control people, and we’re best off when we can gleefully accept it.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.